


Don't Call Me Darlin'

by malevolentmango



Series: Don't Call Me Darlin' [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Fluff, Genji is a Little Shit, Hanzo wearing Jesse's hat, Humor, Jesse never uses the same pet name twice and I'm not sorry, M/M, Pet Names, Sassy Hanzo, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Use of the word "cowbae"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-06 02:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8731363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malevolentmango/pseuds/malevolentmango
Summary: “What was this thought you had, Jesse?”“Well, it’s that, actually. I got all these clever, amazin’ pet names for ya, but ya always just call me ‘Jesse’.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Tsoleil](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorQui) for being a wonderful beta!

“Jesse! On your left!”

 

In a flash, Jesse had turned on the spot to face the new threat: a Talon agent who had tried to flank around them while Reinhardt and Morrison were distracted at the front with the payload they were trying to defend, Lúcio just behind them cranking up his tunes. He dispatched the man quickly with the last shot in his revolver and reloaded, turning to look up at the rooftop behind him.

 

“Thank ya kindly, darlin’,” he replied into his comm, tipping his hat to Hanzo with a grin. His lover made for an impressive sight, silhouetted as he was against the sunset sky, his hair ribbon floating in the gentle evening breeze. Jesse had half a mind to pull out his phone and take a picture.

 

“Focus on the battle, Jesse,” and damn if the smirk he could hear in that low, raspy voice didn’t do the exact opposite of helping him focus on the enemies in front of him, “I have grown attached to your head and I would not want you to lose it.”

 

Jesse chuckled. “Which one, sugar?”

 

Before Hanzo could reply, Morrison’s voice came over the comms: “Could you two idiots save your flirting for when we’re not getting shot at?”

 

“Aw, I was just showin’ my sweetheart how much I appreciate him watchin’ my back,” he said, unleashing a volley of shots into the remaining Talon soldiers. They’d taken care of the worst of the squad already - now they were just cleaning up the stragglers. “S’pose I’ll just have ta give him a more _proper_ thank you later.”

 

Jesse was pretty sure he wouldn’t have needed the comm to pick up the sound of Lúcio’s embarrassed groan, but his reply of “Come on man, seriously?” was drowned out by Reinhardt’s boisterous laughter.

 

“Ah, young love!” the giant of a man shouted, swinging his hammer gleefully into the last of the Talon agents. “So beautiful, so full of promise!”

 

Jesse snorted, scanning their surroundings to make certain they’d finished the job. “Ain’t exactly young no more, Reinhardt.”

 

“When you are as old as I am, my friend, all love is young love!”

 

The sound of Hanzo’s quiet laughter from much closer behind him than before caused him to turn around. The other man had climbed down from his rooftop perch to join them for the clean up. Jesse grinned and grabbed his hand to pull him in for a kiss - a quick one, over before Morrison could even open his mouth to complain about battlefield-appropriate behavior - and said, “Hey there, gorgeous. What’s a fine gentleman like yerself doin’ in a place like this?”

 

“His job, I hope,” Morrison muttered as he and Reinhardt began preparing the payload to be transported back to their airship.

 

Hanzo simply raised an eyebrow at him before moving forward to help. He tossed a casual glance over his shoulder as he said, “I will look forward to your _thank you_ , Jesse.”

 

Jesse followed him to the cart, already thinking through his options. The fact that Morrison took one look at the incredibly smug grin on his face and rolled his eyes was just a bonus, really.

 

~~~

 

After their mission debrief and a long shower that started with Jesse on his knees expressing his sincere appreciation and ended with Hanzo massaging the battle aches out of his shoulders, the two of them were finally relaxing in bed. Jesse was propped up on the pillows, one hand scrolling through his phone and the other wrapped around Hanzo, who rested between his legs with his head on Jesse’s chest as he read a book.

 

Contentment wasn’t a feeling Jesse’d had a lot of in his life, but he certainly intended to enjoy it now.

 

He pressed a kiss to the top of Hanzo’s head, breathing in the clean, fruity scent of his hair. Hanzo huffed, reaching up to swat half-heartedly at Jesse’s face.

 

“I am trying to read, Jesse.”

 

“You sayin’ I’m a _distraction_ , sugar plum?”

 

“Always.”

 

Jesse just chuckled, his fingers moving in lazy circles across Hanzo’s stomach.

 

“Ya know, a thought occurred to me earlier--”

 

“I will mark this auspicious day on the calendar.”

 

“...yer real funny, cupcake. It’s a good thing I like my dangerous samurai archers with a sense of humor.”

 

Hanzo laughed, marking his place in his book so that he could close it. “What was this thought you had, Jesse?”

 

“Well, it’s _that_ , actually. I got all these clever, amazin’ pet names for ya, but ya always just call me ‘Jesse’.”

 

“Did you change your name without telling me? Should I call you ‘Joel’ now?”

 

Jesse snorted. “I mean it! Where’s all the pet names for little ol’ Jesse, that’s what I wanna know.”

 

“That would imply there were some left in the known universe you have not used on me yet.”

 

Jesse tilted his head down so that he could whisper in Hanzo’s ear. “Pumpkin, babycakes, doll face, angel, honey bunch--ow!”

 

He rubbed at his thigh where Hanzo had pinched it. Jesse didn’t need to actually see the self-satisfied smirk on the other man’s face to know it was there.

 

“It is astonishing how many of those you seem to have stored in your brain.”

 

“Well I bet you got room for a few in yours!”

 

Hanzo sighed and laced his fingers through Jesse’s. “What is wrong with your name?”

 

“Not a thing, beautiful. Guess I was just curious is all.”

 

The other man hummed in acknowledgment and seemed to think about it for a minute.

 

“Perhaps I will come up with something.”

 

Jesse smiled and pressed a few soft kisses to the skin of Hanzo’s shoulder. “I’ll love it no matter what.” Then he gave a low chuckle. “I’m still gonna have ya callin’ my name in this here bed though, love muffin.”

 

Hanzo laughed and trailed a hand down Jesse’s thigh. “You will have to try harder than that.”

 

Let it never be said that Jesse McCree was the type of man to back down from a challenge when it presented itself so nicely.

 

~~~

 

Now that the thought was on his mind, however, Jesse found himself noticing something of a pattern over the next few days around the Watchpoint. It wasn’t completely unusual for the members of Overwatch to refer to each other by their call signs instead of something more familiar. New recruits sometimes took longer to get acclimated. But hell, Jesse knew one thing better than most: it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from - the longer you spent bleeding and fighting and surviving by the skin of your teeth with someone, the less likely you were to let those kind of barriers stand for very long. And even the newest Overwatch recruits had done all that and more already.

 

Which was why he found it strange that Hanzo seemed to have never made that switch. Lena was always Tracer. Fareeha was always Pharah. Angela was Mercy on the battlefield and Dr. Ziegler off of it. Hana was Ms. Song, but only because she’d given him an earful one time about calling her D.Va when she wasn’t in her mech or in front of her computer. “Lúcio” seemed to be acceptable because it was as much the kid’s celebrity identity as it was his name. Reinhardt refused to be called anything but Reinhardt, but not for lack of trying on Hanzo’s part - it was just hard to argue with a man who was twice your size and who _literally_ charged face-first into his enemies on a daily basis.

 

In fact, the only exceptions to Hanzo’s strict rules about formality seemed to be Genji...and Jesse.

 

And sure, he could chalk that up to Genji being his brother and Jesse being his...whatever they were. Two people Hanzo cared about. It could be just that simple. But that didn’t explain why Hanzo had been so reluctant the other day to call him anything but “Jesse.”

 

Maybe he was making too big of a deal out of this. But then, he’d been told by more than one person during his life that he was too curious for his own damn good, so going off to find Hanzo seemed like a perfectly swell idea.

 

He wasn’t a hard man to find; whenever Hanzo wasn’t on a mission, training for one, or grabbing a quick meal in the kitchen, Jesse would usually find him on his favorite rooftop perch, looking out over the Bay of Gibraltar. Today was no exception. Hanzo glanced over his shoulder from his seat at the edge of the roof when he heard Jesse approach, a smile breaking out across his face when he saw who it was.

 

“Hello, Jesse,” he said as Jesse flopped down next to him, probably much less gracefully than Hanzo had whenever he’d arrived.

 

“Hey there, sugar pie,” Jesse replied, leaning over to give him a kiss. “Ain’t interruptin’ yer meditatin’ am I?”

 

“No. I was simply thinking.”

 

“Ain’t that the same thing?”

 

Hanzo chuckled. “I suppose it is.” He reached down between them to twine their fingers together. “Was there something you wanted? Or were you just pining in my absence?”

 

Jesse nudged him playfully with his elbow, laughing. “Well, I ain’t never gonna say no to yer company, sweetpea. But I did have a question for ya.”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“Why is it you only call me ‘n Genji by our first names?”

 

Hanzo just stared at him. “You are awfully concerned with names lately,” he muttered, turning his head to look out across the bay.

 

“Is it like a culture thing?”

 

Hanzo huffed, but he appeared to give it some thought before he finally answered, with a frown, “I suppose it must be.”

 

“...Ya ain’t sure?”

 

“I hadn’t really given it much thought.”

 

They lapsed into silence for a while, both watching the sun glisten on the water and the ships moving in and out of the harbor, Hanzo’s hand in his a comforting weight at his side.

 

When Hanzo spoke again, his voice was quiet and thoughtful, as if he was telling a story from memory. “In Japan, it is customary to refer to people by their social status in relation to your own. Which you know, as you refused to call me anything but ‘Shimada-san’ when I first arrived here, if you had to call me anything at all.”

 

Jesse grinned sheepishly. “Well, that was ‘fore I knew ya.”

 

Hanzo nodded. “Exactly. We were not acquainted, and you had every reason to be wary of me.”

 

“Now don’tcha go startin’ this again, I keep tellin’ ya…”

 

Hanzo gave his hand a squeeze, a soft smile on his face. “That I treat myself too harshly, yes. Occasionally, you do say things that are worth remembering.”

 

“Why you--”

 

“My point is that I did not know you as well as I do now. And in Japan, the only people who are referred to by their given names are those you are very close to.”

 

“So what yer sayin’ is I’m just special?”

 

Hanzo glared at him out of the corner of his eye, but the quirk of his lips gave him away. “I would not want to inflate your ego by confirming that.”

 

“It’s a’right, honeybee, ain’t nothin’ I didn’t already know,” he replied with a tip of his hat. Hanzo just rolled his eyes.

 

~~~

 

The rumor that Hanzo was trying to figure out a good nickname for Jesse spread, as all good Overwatch gossip did, incredibly quickly. Hanzo insisted that most of the suggestions he received did not bear repeating, as they were simply too ridiculous to be allowed.

 

Jesse spent a whole evening trying to convince him that Hana’s recommendation of “cowbae” was, in fact, _genius_ , until Hanzo finally pinned him to his bed and shut him up in the best possible way.

 

Genji had been oddly silent about the whole thing. Jesse was almost disappointed; he’d been expecting his old friend to come up with something truly embarrassing for his brother, as only the best kind of little brother could do. He hadn’t suggested anything at all, but Jesse didn’t find out why until a couple days later, when the two of them were assigned to a patrol together.

 

“What did my brother say to you?” Genji asked as they strolled the perimeter of the Watchpoint. He had a golden orb in his hands, one of Zenyatta’s, that he was tossing back and forth as he walked - for a cyborg with no discernible facial features while his faceplate was on, he gave off a convincing air of nonchalance.

 

“Bout what?”

 

“About your obsession with pet names.”

 

“Okay, one,” Jesse said, holding up his metal index finger, “it ain't an obsession, it's a meaningful method of expressing affection. And two,” he swapped the index finger for his middle one with a grin, “yer one to talk. Where's the chain that goes with that ball a’ yers?”

 

Genji chuckled, the electronic modifications of his voice echoing off the cliff face next to them. He put a hand against his chest in a clear imitation of Jesse at his most dramatic and said, “Right here! In my _heart_.”

 

Jesse just stared at him for a second before they both burst into laughter. After they’d calmed down enough to speak again, he said, “He told me it was a Japanese thing. That y’all don’t really do nicknames and such, but first names are for people ya care about.”

 

Genji tilted his head to the side, thinking. “I suppose that is true. But Hanzo has always been more...old-fashioned about it than most. Or perhaps that was just the elders’ influence on him.”

 

“How d’ya mean?”

 

“I do not think I have ever heard him be so familiar with anyone as he is with you.”

 

Jesse was quiet for a moment, and Genji didn’t say anything more as they continued along their path. He wondered at the idea of growing up the way Hanzo had - always proper, formal, never being close to anyone. It was so different from how he’d lived. Deadlock had been practically family, after all, and Overwatch after that. Even Reyes had started scoffing at him whenever Jesse called him anything but “Gabe” in private after they’d worked together for so long. And then for Hanzo to go from that to spending so many years alone? Jesse hadn’t asked him many questions about that time of his life, and he didn’t often bring it up, but it wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of toll that would take on someone.

 

Jesse was no stranger to wandering the world alone, after all.

 

“So ya think maybe the novelty of it hasn’t worn off yet, huh?”

 

Genji gave an electric chuckle. “Perhaps he will not care either way. Perhaps the novelty of _you_ is more than enough.”

 

~~~

 

That night, Jesse found Hanzo in his room reading his book again. He looked up when the door opened and smiled. “Hello, darling,” he said, the word sounding strange on his tongue.

 

Jesse paused in the middle of removing his hat and serape to stare at him. Then he chuckled a bit and strolled over to the bed to plop his hat down on Hanzo’s head. It was just slightly too big for him, but Jesse couldn’t help but think it almost looked better on his lover than it did on him. “If yer gonna steal my lingo, cutie pie, yer gonna need the look to go with it.”

 

Hanzo just laughed, adjusting the hat. Jesse finished removing his armor and sat down in the space Hanzo made for him on the bed, leaning over to give him a lingering kiss.

 

“Hey there, darlin’.”

 

“It sounds much more convincing when you do it.”

 

“Well, I’ve had lotsa practice,” Jesse said, wrapping an arm around Hanzo’s shoulders and leaning back against the pillows. “But ya know, I’ve been thinkin’.” Hanzo opened his mouth to say something and Jesse immediately covered it with his hand. “I’ve had quite enough of yer sass, cuddlebug.”

 

He could feel the curve of Hanzo’s grin against his palm, and the other man pressed a kiss there before Jesse removed his hand.

 

“What were you thinking about this time, Jesse?”

 

Jesse smiled. He’d never really noticed before, the way Hanzo put a subtle emphasis on his name; there was a quiet sort of reverence to it, as if he thought being allowed to say it was some sort of gift. “I think you should call me whatever ya want to.”

 

Hanzo tilted his head in a manner remarkably reminiscent of Genji earlier, Jesse’s hat making the movement look even more adorable. “What happened to your desire for a pet name of your own?”

 

Jesse just shrugged. “Guess I decided I’m mighty partial to the way you say my name too.”

 

Hanzo narrowed his eyes at him. Then he said, suspicious, “What did Genji say to you?”

 

“Oh, lotsa things. ‘Hello, nice weather we’re havin’, did ya see that note Winston left on the fridge about peanut butter rationing? Hilarious!’”

 

Jesse adopted his most winning smile, but Hanzo just rolled his eyes at him. “Very funny.”

 

“He didn’t tell me anythin’ I didn’t already know. S’pose I just hadn’t put all the pieces together yet,” Jesse said, taking hold of the other man’s hand. “But I mean it though: you don’t have to call me darlin’. Or sweetheart, or sugar pie, or anythin’ else. My name ain’t never sounded as sweet comin’ from anyone else’s lips as it does from yours.”

 

Hanzo looked up at him from under the brim of Jesse’s hat, his eyes soft and the corner of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. “It is possible you’re a little biased.”

 

“I think a man in love’s allowed to be a little biased, don’t you?”

 

Hanzo’s eyes widened, the beginnings of a blush spreading across his cheeks. Those weren’t words they’d said to each other yet. But it was another piece of the puzzle that Jesse had put together on the walk back to Hanzo’s room: that they said it in so many other words and actions every single day. It was in the way Hanzo kept one eye on a battle and the other on him; it was in the way Jesse knew his habits so well that he could find him at a moment’s notice; it was in every _darlin'_ and every _Jesse_.

 

And it was in the way Hanzo closed the gap between them to kiss the life out of him, the brim of his hat bumping into Jesse’s forehead before he reached up distractedly to toss it to the side, and in the way Hanzo whispered, breathless, against his lips, “I love you too, Jesse.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you'd like to freak out about McHanzo with me, you can find me on tumblr [here](http://malevolentmango.tumblr.com).


End file.
